Genachowski for FCC, Obama Meets with Gordon Brown and the Threat of a Carbon Tax
President Obama nominates technology advisor Julius Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commission.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visits the White House to discuss international financial issues with President Obama.
The House Ways and Means Committee holds a hearing on “scientific objectives for climate change legislation.”
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1. TECHNOLOGY
President Obama nominates technology advisor Julius Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commission.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the prospects for Genachowski at FCC:
“If Mr. Genachowski recognizes the private sector’s primacy in expanding consumer options and the harm and confusion created by central regulation of communications, and if stands ready to roll back the unnecessary influence of the FCC on the burgeoning choices of consumers, he’ll prove to be a good choice. We would not likely create an FCC today if it didn’t exist. Much of the oversight the agency imposes could be transferred to markets, or eliminated; or in the final analysis left with a general regulator like the Federal Trade Commission.”
2. BUSINESS
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visits the White House to discuss international financial issues with President Obama.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on how Brown and Obama have both agreed on the wrong solution to the banking crisis:
“British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been talking with President Obama this [week], and high on the agenda was the PM’s call for international banking regulation. The interesting thing is that both Obama and Brown have blamed lack of regulation for the banking crisis, when there is clear evidence on both sides of the Atlantic that it was bad and inept regulation that drove the crisis… In one sense both the PM and President are right. The global system of financial regulation is broken, but what the two leaders are thinking of doing is merely putting red tape over the cracks.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
The House Ways and Means Committee holds a hearing on “scientific objectives for climate change legislation.”
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on how the proposed carbon tax of climate alarmist James Hansen would impoverish us all:
“[Dr. James] Hansen was quite harsh in criticizing the Kyoto Protocol (an ‘abject failure’) and carbon trading (a politically unsustainable hidden tax for the benefit of special interests). He outlined a proposal for what he calls carbon ‘Tax & Dividend,’ whereby 100% of the revenues would be refunded to the American people via monthly deposits to their bank accounts. As I discuss here, Hansen’s beguiling proposal could decimate coal-based power in a decade or two, pushing electricity prices up faster than dividend payments increase, and saddling the economy with a growth-chilling energy crisis.”
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